Hands up, hold up, I live here

8:30 AM-2:30 PM

The Spouse was off yesterday, and we spent the whole morning working on some projects around the house while the oldest two were at preschool.

2:59 PM

On what had been a productive, but otherwise uneventful afternoon, we were driving home after picking the girls up from school when my cell phone rang. A person from the call center that monitors our house alarm informed us the alarm had been set off based on tampering of our crawl door and front windows. This would be unsettling, but we’ve had several false alarms in the past and have learned not to get too worked up about these situations. Since we weren’t yet home, we allowed the call center to go ahead and dispatch a police officer to the house.

3:15 PM

We arrived home and didn’t immediately see anything suspicious. The Spouse looked all around the house and went in to make sure there were no signs of anything unusual. We reasoned that the wind had maybe rattled the crawl space door and triggered the alarm. We didn’t see or hear from the police, so we assumed they either did a drive-by and went on OR were never actually dispatched. So, once we determined that it looked safe enough, we went about our usual business… Curious George and snacks for the girls, laundry for me, etc, etc.

4:05 PM

I was getting ready to make a quick trip to Lowe’s and the grocery store. I stood at the door to discuss with the Spouse what exactly we needed from Lowe’s for a few seconds and then opened the door leading from the kitchen to the garage… which is when…

A police officer jumps from the outside edge of the garage around the corner WITH HIS GUN DRAWN and announces himself as a sheriff with the _____ County Police Department. {I will note here that the gun was not pointed at me but drawn up to his chest}.

Completely caught off guard and therefore SCARED OUT OF MY MIND BECAUSE AN ARMED OFFICER HAS JUST JUMPED OUT FROM AROUND THE CORNER OF OUR GARAGE, I immediately start explaining, “Oh my goodness, I live here. We live here. We didn’t think you were coming. That was over an hour ago. It was a false alarm. I promise we live here.”

At this point, the officer {who himself is visibly scared, too} starts kindly asking for proof that we do indeed live here. Of course, my purse is in the car which is parked at the road. The Spouse’s wallet is in the car which is parked at the road. So, the officer says we can show him a bill or a piece of paper that has our name and address on it. Apparently the three young children watching TV and playing in the background wasn’t any evidence of our residence here. So, this is when I felt the need to tell him that if we were going to break into a house, we sure wouldn’t bring our children along with us. But, he didn’t seem to find that humorous.

Still, I needed to find a bill. Ironically, the first two bills I found had our old address on them. {This is when my mom says I should have gone and grabbed a family picture off the wall}. But, soon enough, I found a bill with our name and the right address printed on it for him to check.

Once he confirmed us as the homeowners and not intruders we all relaxed a little. And, he explained that it was standard procedure when an officer arrives on the scene where an alarm has been set off and finds the garage door open, to stand with his/her gun drawn until backup can arrive.

Good to know. See, this is good to know.

He further explained that he could hear a female voice inside the house and wasn’t sure what might be coming at him when the door opened.

{All that was coming at him was a mom on a mission to get to Lowe’s and Kroger and back in an hour. This makes me wonder… is my voice that intimidating? I wasn’t even yelling at anyone. Secondly, where were our neighbors? Hopefully not at home watching this suspicious scene unfold. And, thirdly, is the minivan with three carseats sitting there in the driveway not good for anything? Maybe the assumption is that we could have been taken hostage, in which case I would have welcomed his armed entry…}

I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask what happens when the backup officer does arrive. Do they storm in? Because that would be traumatic.

I thought about all of this for several hours after that fact, and all I can say is… that was scary. And, I sure am glad it was a false alarm since it took an hour for the officer to arrive.

SHEESH.

The moral of this story is that if you do have a false alarm, you must promptly call and cancel the dispatch even if it appears that the dispatch never happened. And, if you choose not to do so, you must close your garage door upon re-entering your home. I repeat, CLOSE the garage door.

And, that concludes this public service announcement.

Have a nice weekend.